Airtel stays out of Sri Lankan 4G spectrum bidding

Bharti Airtel Lanka, part of Indian telecom giant Bharti Airtel, did not participate in the 4G spectrum sale held in Colombo on Thursday.

The director general of Sri Lnaka's Telecommunications Regulatory Commission Anusha Palpita said that only three of the island's five mobile operators took part in the competitive bids.

Malaysia's Dialog Axiata was the successful bidder, Palpita said. Mobitel and Etisalat were other two participants in the sealed-bid process. The Sri Lankan government had set the floor price for bids at 800 million Sri Lankan rupees.

Airtel Lanka, the last entrant to the growing mobile telephone market, was not available for comment.

A spokesperson of parent company Bharti Airtel in New Delhi declined to comment.

"We raised a sum of Rs 3.28 billion from the sale of LTE mobile spectrum. This sum was higher than expected," Palpita said.

"LTE deployment will usher the country into a new era of advanced wireless services including fast high capacity mobile broadband with wide spread coverage", she added.

Sri Lanka's current number of mobile phones far exceeds its 20 million population the data shows.